


Manners Saveth Man

by icarus_chained



Category: Original Work
Genre: Anger, Dragons, Fairy Tale Elements, Fantasy, Fluff and Humor, Fractured Fairy Tale, Friendship, Gen, Grumpiness, Happy Ending, Knights - Freeform, Prompt Fic, Rants, Sorceresses, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 08:20:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5156762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The trials of the exceptionally grumpy sorceress Mellith and her perhaps not entirely sympathetic friend Khered the dragoness. It turns out that manners may well save knightly lives, as a certain Sir Haradyth found out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Manners Saveth Man

**Author's Note:**

> Random bit of nonsense for a prompt :)

"I'm telling you, Khered, if _one more_ arrogant, pissant, bull-in-a-china-shop, tin-plated _nincompoop_ of a knight comes storming up my bloody stairs to "rescue me", I am going to _flatten this kingdom_. On purpose, not the near-accidents they keep almost causing. For the love of gods and little fishes, I'M TRYING TO WORK OVER HERE!"

Khered ducked her head hastily. Dragons didn't smile, as a rule. Wrong shaped face. It looked like Khered was doing her damnedest to manage it regardless. Mellith whirled and stalked across under Khered's chin, shaking her fists and railing furiously.

"You think this is _funny_?!" she demanded, all but spitting brimstone. "Will you be laughing when the next bloody idiot interrupts me in the middle of bottling primordial chaos? Hmm? Will you think it funny after I've pasted the kingdom across three different dimensions because some bloody idiot with rocks for brains couldn't keep his sword in his sheath and couldn't even _begin_ to imagine that a woman in a tower might be a _terrifying sorceress_ instead of a poor, innocent kidnapped maiden?"

She snarled, stomping off to glower down across the kingdom and kick rocks angrily off the battlements. If some stupid knight happened to be wandering around beneath them to get splattered, so much the bloody better, too. Khered attempted a straight face. Probably. That was _probably_ what she was attempting. Mellith ignored her. She was well into her rant now, and beginning to feel quite good about it as well.

"And, you know, if it's a _man_ that people see wandering around on top of the tower, oh, of _course_ he's a wizard, don't you know wizards always have towers, they're high-minded like that, heads always in the clouds, you must absolutely be respectful of that, but if it's a _woman_ , noooo, obviously she's been kidnapped and sent up there, everyone knows female magic-users are witches and live in cottages in the woods and _eat children_. Not high-minded at all. Also, they're all ugly. No, no, if she's in a tower she's obviously a princess. The magic is because she's _bespelled_. Not her fault, poor dear. GAH!"

Khered snorted. Clearing her nostrils, that's all. Fire-drake, you know. Had to keep those passages clear. She snorted, and when she spoke it was with so patently calm and neutral a tone that Mellith wanted to shoot ice-pepper up her nose just because.

"I'm sure there must be the occasional fellow who was willing to believe you were a terrifying sorceress," her friend said diplomatically. "I've never known you not to make that ... perfectly clear perfectly quickly."

Again with the dragon not-smile. Mellith growled just on principle, but a little of the tension eased out of her shoulders. She still shoved a small boulder violently off the wall, though.

"There's been a few," she admitted grouchily. "After the Great Fairy cursed that kingdom to hell and back last winter, more than there used to be. That's not better, though. They all think I'm _evil_ then. Just because I'm terrifying when I'm working and happen to consort with dragons, doesn't make me automatically an evil enchantress! I'm just _working_. You know, trying to break curses, keep the kingdom in one piece, not _blow us all to kingdom come_. I don't have bloody time to be fishing swords out of my walls and scraping knightly skeletons off my floor! Not to mention all the bloody times they interrupt me at inopportune bloody moments. That paladin was bloody lucky his god was on form and paying attention, or we really _would_ have been smeared across several dimensions. What do they think they're playing at! If the nice evil sorceress lady is currently channelling the forces of creation into a tiny little bottle, what the bloody hell makes them think that _jogging her elbow_ is a good bloody plan!? Are they _trying_ to get themselves discorporated?"

Khered gave up on not-smiling and started outright chuckling instead. It was always such a startling sound from a dragon. Like a giant sitting on a huge wind bellows and then getting up in a panic when it started making a noise. A great gusty irregular wheezing sound. Appalling. Truly appalling. Mellith glared up at her, her hair bristling with magic. Not startlement. Definitely not. Khered only wheezed more loudly to herself at the sight of it.

"Oh," the dragon breathed, little flames licking at the corners of her lips. "Oh, Mellith, I'm so sorry. Really I am. It's just ... You just ..."

"Oh, sure," Mellith growled. "Laugh at me. Great. I'm only trying to keep us all in one piece over here. That's just _great_."

Khered shook her head. At her size, it carried her quite a ways back and forth across the top of the tower. It would have been a bit dizzying to try and follow, so Mellith didn't bother. She put up a small spell to keep from being buffeted over the edge by the breeze of it, and plonked her hands on her hips to glare. 

"... Why did you let that last one live, then?" the dragon asked at last, with audible amusement. "You know, that fellow the other week? I thought he'd been the worst of both worlds. Came charging up to the highest room of the tallest tower to rescue his princess, found himself an 'evil sorceress' instead, promptly tried to kill you? Didn't you say he almost took your head off? I thought you'd have turned him into a chicken and fried him for lunch."

Mellith actually flushed a little. She didn't mean to. She most emphatically did _not_ mean to. It happened anyway, and Khered caught it immediately. Of course she bloody did. Damned busybody of a bloody dragon ...

"Sir Haradyth, and he apologised," Mellith snapped shortly, folding her arms defensively across her chest while Khered raised a jewelled brow-ridge and grinned toothily down at her. "He ducked out of range of my catch-all spell to keep us both from being _eaten alive_ , and then he apologised very nicely for intruding at a bad time. I told him to wait downstairs while I finished making sure we weren't all going to die, and he went, and then he listened, and he apologised and he said that he'd tell his king that I was only trying to get my work done and to stop sending people to bother me. He was _very polite_ , okay? He was ... He was just polite. That's all I have to say on the matter!"

Khered pressed her lips together over her gleaming teeth and nodded seriously. "Of course," she said agreeably. "Of course, Mellith. He was polite. I'm sure it was very nice."

Mellith snarled fitfully, and made sure to aim her next boulder at Khered's chin instead of happily off the battlement. "Oh, _shut up_ ," she said, stomping off towards the door of her tower and doing her best to ignore the broken-bellow wheezing of Khered's laughter. "Some friend you are, Khered! I don't even know why I bother!"

The dragon cackled cheerfully, but left Mellith alone to flounce downstairs in peace and maybe think of some pretext to invite the ever-polite Sir Haradyth back for tea.

Ugh. All right. Maybe the stupid dragon wasn't that bad a friend after all. _Fine_.


End file.
